2026 EMSL-JGI Joint User Meeting: Empowering Automated Laboratories—Integrating Experimentation with Data

March 3 - 5, 2026

View poster abstracts | View poster directory
(the poster sessions take place Tuesday and Wednesday beginning at 5:45 p.m.)
* Sponsored by Zymo Research and Ginkgo Bioworks

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2026

8 a.m. - Badge pick up and breakfast

• Grand Ballroom - Pre-function area

8:50 a.m. - Welcome kick off and safety briefing

• Nigel Mouncey, JGI Director
• Alex Beliaev, EMSL

SESSION 1 - Decoding the Structure-Function Secrets of Environmental Microbiomes

Co-Chairs: Trent Northen (JGI) and Paul Piehowski (EMSL)

All talks in Grand Ballroom

9 a.m. - Plenary talk - "Hidden Metabolic Currencies: From Genes to Community Function"

• Kelly Wrighton, Colorado State University

9:45 a.m. - Short talk - "Microbial Food Web Connectivity is Structured by Time"

• Olivia Ahern, Marine Biological Lab

10 a.m. - Break - Discussions continue

10:30 a.m. - Selected talk - "Linking Microbial Community Structure to Function Through Strain-Resolved Metaproteomics"

• Delaney Beals, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

11 a.m. - Selected talk - "Competitors, Collaborators, and Frenemies: Elucidating the Mechanisms Governing Microbes Divide Labor in Polysaccharide Degradation"

• Stephen Lindemann, Purdue University

11:30 a.m. - Short talk - "Decoding Viral Impacts in Plant-Rhizobacterial Interactions"

• Jonelle Basso, Joint Genome Institute

11:45 a.m. - Short talk - "Genomics-Informed Functional Interrogation of Drought Responsive Plant Microbiomes"

• Jonathan Conway, Princeton University

Noon - Group photo (before breaking for lunch)

Noon - Working lunch - Presentations by event sponsors Zymo Research and Ginkgo Bioworks

• 12:30 p.m. - "New Innovations in Sample Prep" - Sponsored by Zymo Research
  Brett Farthing, Zymo Research
   
• 12:45 p.m. - "Optimizing Cell-Free Protein Synthesis with OpenAI: Battle Stories" - Sponsored by Ginkgo Bioworks
  Michal Jastrzebski, Ginkgo Bioworks

SESSION 2 - Genomic Ingenuity: Crafting the Future of Biodesign

Co-Chairs: Yasuo Yoshikuni (JGI) and James Carothers (UW)

All talks in Grand Ballroom

1:30 p.m. - Plenary talk - "Implementing Automation and High-Throughput CRISPR-Based Methods to Onboard and Engineer Performance-Advantaged Microbes"

• Carrie Eckert, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

2:15 p.m. - Short talk - "Leveraging Multi-omics to Reveal How Impairing Triacylglycerol Breakdown in Stomata Impacts Biomass Accumulation of Bioenergy Feedstocks"

• Daniel Tejeda-Lunn, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

2:30 p.m. - Break - Discussions continue

3 p.m. - Selected talk - "Engineering Microbial Consortia for Critical Mineral Recovery: A Genomics-Enabled Approach"

• Crysten Blaby-Haas, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

3:30 p.m. - Selected talk - "Automated Experimentation and Evolutionary Engineering of Microbes for Data-Driven Design"

• Adam Feist, University of California, San Diego

4 p.m. - Short talk - "Monitoring Lytic Phage Host Range in Complex Communities Using an Autonomous RNA Barcoder"

• Elizabeth Zeng, Rice University

4:15 p.m. - Short talk - "Identification of Functional Promoters in Anaerobic Gut Fungi"

• Elaine Kirschke, University of California, Santa Barbara

4:30 p.m. - Break - Discussions continue

4:45 p.m. - Keynote - "Synthetic Biology: Making Biology Programmable"

• Jim Collins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

5:45 p.m. - Poster session and reception (Posters 1-60 presenting)

• Salons A, B, C
• View poster abstracts

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2026

8 a.m. - Badge pick up and breakfast

• Grand Ballroom - Pre-function area

SESSION 3 - AI in Action: Automating Experiments for Genomic Exploration

Co-Chairs: Ian Blaby (JGI) and Todd Edwards (EMSL)

All talks in Grand Ballroom

9 a.m. - Plenary talk - "Automated Exploration of Combinatorial Biology"

• Paul Jensen, University of Michigan

9:45 a.m. - Short talk - "Community-Driven Data Development for EMSL's Anaerobic Microbial Phenotyping Platform: Stakeholder Engagement to Enable AI-Ready Experimental Workflows"

• Maia Kapur, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (EMSL)

10 a.m. - Break - Discussions continue

10:30 a.m. - Selected talk - "The ExFAB Biofoundry: Accelerating Biotechnology from Extreme & Exceptional Microorganisms"

• Michelle O'Malley, University of California, Santa Barbara

11 a.m. - Selected talk - "Toward Autonomous Biosystems Engineering: AI-driven Protein and Strain Design with Automated Evolution"

• Christopher Henry, Argonne National Laboratory

11:30 a.m. - Short talk - "Micro Grow Agents: A Multi-Agent Framework for Evidence-Driven Microbial Growth Media Design and Optimization"

• Marcin Joachimiak, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

11:45 a.m. - Short talk - "Automated Construction of Arrayed Mutant Libraries for Genome-Wide Analysis"

• Alissa Bleem, National Laboratory of the Rockies

Noon - Working lunch (networking)

SESSION 4 - Integrating Data and Modeling for Systemic Insights

Co-Chairs: Kjiersten Fagnan (JGI) and Kelly Stratton (EMSL)

All talks in Grand Ballroom

1:30 p.m. - Plenary talk - "Machine Learning and Automation to Enable Biomanufacturing Through Synthetic Biology"

• Hector Garcia Martin, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

2:15 p.m. - Short talk - "KBase BER AI-Native Lakehouse: From Data Integration to Agentic Discovery"

• Gazi Mahmud, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

2:30 p.m. - Break - Discussions continue

3 p.m. - Selected talk - "A Framework for Chemical Imaging Exploration, AI-Assisted Reasoning, and Data-Worth Analysis (ChImERA) with Applications to Critical Minerals and Materials"

• Sameera Nalin Venkat, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (EMSL)

3:30 p.m. - Selected talk - "A Novel AI-Enabled Framework to Confidently Assign Metabolic Function to Unknown Genes, Proteins, and Metabolites Using Multi-Omics Data"

• Jason McDermott, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

4 p.m. - Short talk - "Meta-Virus Resource (MetaVR): Expanding the Frontiers of Viral Diversity with 24 Million Uncultivated Virus Genomes"

• Mateus Fiamenghi, Joint Genome Institute

4:15 p.m. - Break - Discussions continue

4:45 p.m. - Keynote - "Toward Sustainable, Bio-Sourced Polymers"

• Kristala Prather, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

5:45 p.m. - Poster session and reception (Posters 61-110 presenting)

• Salons A, B, C
• View poster abstracts

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2026 | Workshops

8 a.m. - Badge pick up and breakfast

• Grand ballroom - Pre-function area

9 a.m. - Noon - Workshop 1: Single Cell and Spatial Biology

Co-leads: Ben Cole (LBNL), Paul Piehowski (EMSL)

• Harbor Room
   
• Description:
  Rapid technological advances in droplet microfluidics, imaging, and low-input molecular biology has dramatically increased the throughput and depth at which we can understand behaviors of thousands of individual cells in a complex population. In this workshop we will discuss the power and limitations of single-cell and spatial biology, and recent advances in their development at the JGI and EMSL.

9 a.m. - Noon - Workshop 2: Data Integration and Modeling

Co-leads: Simon Roux (JGI), Kelly Stratton (EMSL)

• Salons E & F
   
• Description:
  Data integration is key to characterizing complex biological systems, yet properly integrating multi-omics data remains challenging due to differences in data representation models, siloed data streams, and current practices limiting data sharing and re-use. This workshop will focus on resources available across JGI/EMSL and with partners NMDC/KBase/ESS-DIVE for biological data integration, lessons learned from recent efforts aiming at enabling large-scale biological data analysis, and upcoming developments in this area.

1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. - Workshop 3: Lab-Scale Systems for the Study of Microbiomes

Co-leads: Trent Northen (JGI), Arunima Bhattacharjee (EMSL)

• Salons E & F
   
• Description:
  Laboratory-fabricated ecosystems provide a powerful approach for establishing causal mechanisms within microbial communities. This session will describe the latest technologies for constructing and using laboratory habitats to study natural and synthetic microbial communities.

1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. - Workshop 4: Autonomous Experimentation Toward Reproducible High-Throughput Data Acquisition

Co-leads: Ian Blaby (JGI), Todd Edwards (EMSL)

• Harbor Room
   
• Description:
  Autonomous experimentation covers a wide range of possibilities. This session will cover existing tools and others being developed at the JGI and EMSL. We'll also discuss where autonomy makes sense, the data types and throughput with which data can be attained, and how to prepare to take advantage of capabilities both preexisting and in development.